Tut Exhibit - King Tutankhamun Exhibit, Collection: Basic Funeral Equipment - An Outer (second) Coffin of Wood Overlaid with Gold and Semiprecious Stones

The Tutankhamun Exhibit

Basic Funeral Equipment

An Outer (second) Coffin of Wood Overlaid with Gold and Semiprecious Stones

An Outer (second) Coffin of Wood Overlaid with Gold and Semiprecious Stones

It is hard to imagine the amount of work which must have been put into making this coffin. Carved in wood, it was first overlaid with sheet gold on a thin layer of plaster. Narrow strips of gold, placed on edge, were then soldered to the base to form cells in which small pieces of colored glass, fixed with cement, were laid. The technique is know as Egyptian cloisonne work, but it is not true cloisonne because the glass was already shape before being put in the cells (cloisons), and not put in the cells in powder form and fused by heating.